They’ve tracked an intense radio signal coming from deep in space to its source – and been left stunned by what they found.
For years, researchers have been trying to figure out what causes fast radio bursts, or FRBs, which are brief but extremely powerful emissions of energy originating from deep in space.
In an effort to understand what exceptionally severe circumstances could be hurling extremely powerful outbursts into the universe.
Now, scientists have traced the origin of one of those explosions back to its home galaxy. However, that galaxy is a very ancient and inactive one, and it has a peculiar, unusual shape.
So far, researchers have only discovered Fast Radio Bursts coming from relatively young galaxies. This one breaks our current understanding of their origin.
Experts believe that mysterious cosmic occurrences may be originating from a wider variety of locations than previously thought.
“With this new data, we’re seeing that even when we think we’ve got a handle on something in space, the universe has a way of keeping us on our toes,” Northwestern’s Wen-fai Fong, a senior author on two studies explaining this new discovery, said. “It’s this ongoing interaction with the universe that makes studying changing cosmic events so exceptionally exciting.”
The Fast Radio Burst, or FRB, was discovered in February 2024 and remained active through July 2024, allowing researchers to pinpoint its location in the sky.
Once that was done, researchers directed satellites towards the location – and were surprised by what they saw. Instead of a young galaxy, they found one that was 11.3 billion years old, and it was only about two billion light years from Earth.
Scientists then simulated what conditions might be like in that galaxy. Those simulations showed that the galaxy appears extremely brilliant and large, with a mass of 100 billion times that of the Sun, making it the most massive galaxy known to be associated with an FRB, and one of the most massive of any kind.
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